Closely akin to this method of divination is the well-known mediæval diversion known as the _Sortes Virgilianæ_, which consisted in opening a volume of Virgil's works, and forecasting the future from some word or passage selected at random. The Sacred Book is now the modern substitute, and there is no doubt but that the superstition is thousands of years older than even the Virgil of the Augustan age. This custom, practised in many parts of England on New Year's Day, is called "Dipping." A Bible is laid on the table at breakfast-time, and those who wish to consult it open its pages at random; it being supposed that the events of the ensuing year will be in some way foreshown by the contents of the chapter contained in the two open pages. Sometimes the anxious inquirer will take the Bible to bed with him on New Year's Eve, and on awaking after twelve o'clock, open it in the dark, mark a verse with his thumb, turn down a corner of the page, and replace the book under the pillow. That verse is said to be a prophecy of the good or bad luck that will befall him during the coming year. This as a mode of divination is extensively practised. Another form of this superstition consists in foretelling the events in a man's life from the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs, the thirty-one verses of this chapter being supposed to have a mystical reference to the corresponding days of the month. Thus, it is predicted of persons born on the 14th that they will get their "food from afar." A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, writing from a Northamptonshire village, tells us that "this is so fully believed in by some that a boy has actually been apprenticed to a _linen_-draper, for no other reason than because he was born on the 24th of the month; whilst those born on the 13th would be sent to a _woollen_-draper. The twenty-fourth verse speaks of 'fine linen,' and the thirteenth of 'wool.'" Another means of discovering a guilty person is by the "Sieve and Shears," one of those divinatory instruments upon which such implicit reliance has been placed by superstitious folk from time out of mind, described as it is in the "Hudibras" as "Th' oracle of sieve and shears, That turns as certain as the spheres." The sieve is held hanging by a thread, or else by the points of a pair of shears stuck into its rim, it being supposed to turn, or swing, or fall at the mention of a thief's name, and give similar signs for other purposes. This ancient rite was formerly known as the "Trick of the Sieve and Scissors," and was generally practised among the Greeks for ascertaining crime. We find an allusion to it in Theocritus:-- "To Agrio, too, I made the same demand; A cunning woman she, I cross'd her hand: She turn'd the sieve and shears, and told me true, That I should love, but not be lov'd by you."